


delphinus

by bluejayblueskies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (of a sort), Alternate Universe - Merpeople, First Meetings, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Merfolk Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, No Fear Entities (The Magnus Archives), They/Them Pronouns for Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29164356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejayblueskies/pseuds/bluejayblueskies
Summary: Three and a half weeks ago, Peter had packed enough supplies for four months, set sail from port, and had breathed in the salt of the sea with a relief that was as palpable upon his tongue as the taste of brine. He would cast a net over the side of his ship and inspect its contents for anything that might spark his interest (or, on occasion, make a sum of money). More often, though, he simply released the mass of wriggling fish back into the sea and settled for watching the sun dip below the horizon, with only the gentle rocking of the boat to keep him company.Two and a half weeks ago, Peter had pulled the net over the side of his fishing boat, straining at the weight of it, and found a pair of sharp brown eyes staring back at him.
Relationships: Peter Lukas/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36
Collections: JonPeter Week 2021





	delphinus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 2 of jonpeter week - open ocean/personal space!
> 
> Content warnings for a wee bit of blood and mentions of biting/eating people (very blink-and-you'll-miss-it)

If asked, Peter Lukas would say that he wasn’t lonely, and it would be true. He spent six months of the year — more if he could help it — sailing the white-crested waves of the ocean, away from the sights and sounds of land, the bustle of cities and the chatter of people that grated on his ears like sandpaper. He kept as small a crew as he could manage when he left shore, never more than ten or so pairs of hands to handle the cargo he would carry from port to port. Sometimes, though, he would sail alone, packing enough supplies for several months on his small fishing boat and leaving behind a life that, lonesome as it was, remained as sticky and cloying as mud upon the soles of his boots.

This was one of those times. Three and a half weeks ago, Peter had packed enough supplies for four months, set sail from port, and breathed in the salt of the sea with a relief that was as palpable upon his tongue as the taste of brine. He didn’t particularly enjoy fishing, really, though it was as good a story as any to placate the dockworkers and to keep conversation to a minimum. Still, he was not immune to boredom, and so he often would cast a net over the side of his ship and inspect its contents for anything that might spark his interest (or, on occasion, make a sum of money). More often, though, he simply released the mass of wriggling fish back into the sea and settled for watching the sun dip below the horizon, with only the gentle rocking of the boat to keep him company.

Two and a half weeks ago, Peter had pulled the net over the side of his fishing boat, straining at the weight of it, and found a pair of sharp brown eyes staring back at him.

Peter would deny to his dying breath the shout of surprise he let out at the sight, or the fact that the net immediately slipped from his grasp and hit the deck with a wet  _ smack. _ The answering sound that came from the net, however — a sort of punched-out gasp, almost akin to a groan — was loud in his ears, because it was a human sound. And it had not come from him.

Quickly, Peter gripped his fisherman’s knife and severed the ropes of the net with practiced ease. And when the fish trapped within began to slide out, flopping across the deck like an undulating carpet of silvers and blues, so did the owner of those brown eyes.

Having been raised on the coast, Peter had grown up hearing stories about the creatures that lurked beneath the white-capped waves of the sea that he spent so many days watching with growing fascination. There were selkies, seals who took the form of man to walk on land and who carried their coats beside them, vulnerable and exposed. There were sirens, whose songs could lure many a sailor to their grave with their beauty and with promises of all that one desired. 

And then there were merfolk, with the tails of fish and the bodies of men and with teeth so sharp they need only brush against skin to break it. Merfolk traveled alone; they were solitary creatures whose wit and cunning could trick the smartest of fishermen and whose taste for human flesh could never be sated. They were bad omens, portents of doom, the dockworkers would whisper. Nobody had ever seen one of the merfolk and had lived to tell the tale.

And yet here Peter was. The creature glared at him with eyes that were startlingly human, but their tail failed to find purchase on the wooden deck and their hands splayed flat against the wood in an effort to keep themself still. Their skin was a darker brown than the wood beneath them and was dotted with scars of a variety of shapes and sizes, and their hair lay across their shoulders and midway down their back, knotted with seaweed and delicate shells and blue-green threads in an intricate pattern that Peter found his eyes drawn to over and over again. Their tale sat starkly against the silver-blues of the smaller fish, an inky black with iridescent purple markings and triangular fins jutting out at regular intervals. Their gaze upon Peter was piercing, and when Peter allowed their eyes to meet, he found that theirs glowed ever so slightly, like morning light streaming in through a dusty window.

They were  _ breathtaking. _ And when they bared their teeth at Peter, he was unsurprised to see that they were sharp and pointed, like that of a shark. But they said nothing. So Peter felt it only appropriate that he take the initiative.

“Peter Lukas,” he said, for it would be quite rude not to give the creature something to call him, wouldn’t it? “I don’t suppose you speak English though, do you. Pity.”

The creature’s nose flared with irritation, and in a crisp British accent that mirrored Peter’s own, they said, “The only thing  _ pitiable _ about this situation is the fact that you think  _ me _ to be beneath  _ you. _ ”

Peter considered the creature with growing interest. “Now, that  _ is _ a surprise. It does make this whole affair considerably easier, though.”

“ _ Affair? _ ” the creature snapped, and though their tone was cutting, there was fear in their eyes, sharp and sudden. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come now,” Peter said jovially. “This is my first time encountering your kind. You’ll forgive me a bit of simple curiosity.”

“I will do no such thing,” the creature said, though their face had softened ever so slightly. After a long moment, the creature said, hesitantly, “Though if… if I  _ did _ entertain such a thought, I would only do so under the condition that you should let me go once you’ve asked your questions.”

Peter considered this. On the one hand, capturing one of the merfolk would be sure to earn him a large sum of money, perhaps even a fortune if he found the right buyer. On the other, he found that he quite liked the idea of letting such a creature slip free from the hands of others, leaving him with a secret that was his alone to keep. 

And he couldn’t say that he  _ wasn’t _ curious. It had always been a flaw of his.

So Peter said, with a small smile, “I believe that can be arranged.”

And so the creature spoke. They spoke of the wide-open sea and what lay beneath, and they spoke of a life of loneliness that had lasted far longer than Peter’s had and would last far, far longer still, and they spoke of the tales the others of their kind had imparted upon them — for though they were alone now, they had not always been. They spoke of myth — of fishermen who ran scared at the first flash of sharp teeth, teeth that only ever tore into the flesh of fish and of seals and that rarely broke the skin of a human, for the meat tasted foul, of freshwater and dirt. And as they spoke of beauty and knowledge and freedom, all things that Peter longed for upon the ocean but could never truly grasp, Peter found himself enraptured with the creature — who, they said, called themself Jon. 

So Peter spoke in return. He spoke of a life on land devoid of happiness and filled instead with the breaths and movements and speech of others, none of which spoke to the rushing waves within him. He spoke of a childhood of absent parents and distant servants and time spent wandering the halls of a house far too large for any one person to live within and the gardens and woods outside it, straying further and further from mahogany furniture and marbled floors until one day he simply did not come back. He spoke of the quiet presence of his crew when he took work transporting cargo and how some days they, too, were too much, and he would retreat to the captain’s quarters and would simply stare at the sea, wishing that it would swallow him whole.

He spoke, and Jon listened, and though Peter was not alone, he felt somehow like he had found what he was looking for. Because Jon was the sea, and they were the rushing of waves, and they were the wide-open sky, and Peter found that he very much did not want them to leave. 

But he had made a promise, and a promise he would keep, because despite all else, Peter was a man of his word. So when the time came, he brought Jon to the edge of his ship and allowed them to slip into the ocean below, swallowed by white-capped waves for a long moment before resurfacing once more, hair fanned out around them in a halo of brown and grey.

“I won’t be heading back to land for quite some time,” Peter found himself saying, hoping that his words carried on the sea air to the water below. From the way that Jon’s face twitched into something like a smile, he knew that they had.

“Is that so?” they said, voice neutral yet undercut with something lighter, anticipatory. “Then perhaps we’ll run across each other again.”

And with that, Jon was gone, swallowed by the sea. Peter indulged himself just a moment longer, watching the surface of the sea fold in on itself again and again, before turning away and returning to the solitary comfort of his ship.

He ignored the itch at the back of his mind, telling him that something was missing, and settled upon the deck, looking up at the stars that had appeared as the sun had set upon the ocean and at the moon that illuminated the water in lovely silvers and indigos. He mapped out the constellations with his eyes, lingering ever so briefly on Delphinus where it lay just against the horizon. And when a glimmer of light caught his eye, the quick flash of a shooting star, Peter found that he could not resist a wish.

* * *

Peter did run across Jon again, a few days later, a quick flash of purple amongst the waves that resolved itself into bright eyes and a hesitant smile. And then again a few days later, and again, and again, until Jon’s appearance became a daily occurrence and Peter spent more time in their company than he did in solitude. But he found he didn’t mind. Not when Jon told such fascinating stories, speaking of a life far beyond Peter’s comprehension yet one that Peter felt his mind snagging upon, for loneliness and solitude were universal feelings, and of this Jon and he shared a striking commonality. Not when Jon allowed Peter to run his hands along their tail, always in the direction of the scales so as not to cause pain, brushing the edges of the fins with the pads of his fingers and pulling away a sticky moisture not unlike that of an eel. Not when Jon looked at Peter with soft brown eyes, lidless and forever watching yet weightless upon him, so Peter never felt suffocated by their gaze.

And not when Jon finally paused midway through a story involving a shoal of fish and a particularly tenacious selkie, laid their hand upon Peter’s where it rested upon the curve of their tail, and said, “I’d heard stories about humans, you know.”

“Oh?” Peter said, for as much as Jon spoke of the sea, they rarely spoke of what lay beyond it, and when they did, it was brief, a simple necessity more than anything.

Jon simply nodded their affirmation. Then, in a quieter voice, they said, “They said that you were cruel. That you would hunt things you didn’t understand, remove them from the sea and butcher them or sell them or keep them for your own. They said that humans would steal the skin of a selkie and lock it away, rid them of the sea for good and keep them bound to the land and to the one who owned them. My kind, we didn’t- we didn’t have such problems, not really.” They smiled then, a wild, sharp-toothed thing, and said, “We found that a flash of teeth and a bite to the arm or leg would keep humans away effectively enough. I expect that’s where the ‘flesh-eating’ myth came from. It’s for the best, I suppose. It’s better than the alternative, at least.”

“I see,” Peter said. For it was true, wasn’t it? Peter had considered it, once — capturing Jon, selling them to the highest bidder, monetizing their rarity and resting upon his fortune afterward. Even now, the thought tempted him, loath as he was to acknowledge it. But it was just a thought, and though he had limited control over those, his actions were his and his alone. So he continued, “And now? I like to think that I can be quite charming when I put my mind to it.”

Jon’s smile was less sharp then, fondness mixed with exasperation. “I wouldn’t be  _ quite _ so bold,” they said lightly, humor seeping into their voice. “But  _ perhaps _ I… I might have gained a new perspective on humanity lately.” A pause. Then: “One- one human in particular, I suppose.”

“Really?” Peter said, feigning ignorance. “And who might that be? Goodness, do I have to be on the lookout for some sort of  _ competition _ ? Jon, you should have warned me, I would have prepared myself.”

Jon scowled, with absolutely no heat behind it, and removed their hand from Peter’s, crossing their arms across their chest sullenly. “I swear, I try to be serious for  _ one moment, _ and you feel the need to make a  _ joke  _ about it.”

“And why wouldn’t I?” Peter said lightly. “You do get such an adorable look when you’re cross with me.”

Jon’s cheeks flushed a faint blue so quickly Peter thought it quite funny indeed, and he didn’t try to hide the small chuckle that escaped him at the sight. “Stop that,” Jon said petulantly. “I am  _ not _ adorable. I am an apex predator, a fearsome creature of the ocean, a  _ terrifying _ monster to all of humanity.”

“Right,” Peter said, his bright smile not diminishing in the slightest. “I’m shaking in my boots.”

“Shut up,” Jon said.

Peter raised a single eyebrow. “Make me.”

And so Jon did. They leaned forward with a suddenness that caught Peter off guard, braced their hands on the wooden deck, and kissed him. Peter caught the taste of salt and fish and blood as he pressed into Jon’s mouth and promptly nicked his tongue on the sharp peaks of Jon’s teeth. Jon startled slightly at that and made to pull back, but Peter tangled his hand in Jon’s hair and kept them close, twisting his hand just enough that Jon let out a bitten-off gasp against Peter’s mouth, one that made Peter grin an obscene amount and drew a muttered, “You are  _ insufferable, _ ” from Jon’s mouth.

“I know,” Peter said, and kissed them again. 

And when Jon finally slipped back into the ocean, hair significantly more tangled than when they had arrived — a state for which they had chastised Peter  _ considerably _ , because  _ It’s going to take me ages to untangle that, Peter, it’s not like I have a hairbrush to work with _ — Peter felt more at home within himself than he had in years. Perhaps in his entire life.

“Perhaps we’ll run across each other again,” Jon said, a dry amusement in their voice that contrasted starkly with the faint red staining their lips from where Peter had grown careless and gotten his own lip caught in the sharpness of Jon’s teeth, an act which he didn’t regret in the slightest.

“Perhaps,” Peter said, knowing that he had had a taste of the sea and now had no desire to return to the confines of land ever again.

Jon disappeared beneath the waves and Peter returned to his ship, running his tongue over the cut on his lip and tasting the bitter tang of iron and salt that still lingered there. And when, far in the distance, he saw the briefest flash of purple, almost like the wave of a hand, he couldn’t help but laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> [the constellation Delphinus](https://www.constellation-guide.com/constellation-list/delphinus-constellation/)
> 
> comments and kudos make my day! if you liked what you read, let me know 💛
> 
> find me on tumblr [@bluejayblueskies](https://bluejayblueskies.tumblr.com/)


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